The bikini conversation started sowhere over the Atlantic on final approach to Rio de Janeiro, and Luca heard every word of it whether he wanted to or not.
Emily had wandered up to the cockpit with sothing from her bag, a bikini from Puerto Rico, perfectly reasonable by any normal standard. Luca had seen that one. He'd enjoyed seeing that one. Zoe, who was supposed to be copiloting, swiveled her chair around and looked at it the way a doctor looks at an X-ray with bad news in it.
"That's not going to work," Zoe said.
"What do you an it's not going to work? It's a bikini."
"It's not a Rio bikini."
"It covers the sa parts."
"Emily." Zoe pulled up a photo on her communicator. "This is a Rio bikini."
Emily leaned over Zoe's shoulder. Luca watched her eyes go very wide.
"That's a string."
"It's three pieces of fabric and so string. And the back?" Zoe swiped. "There is no back."
Emily grabbed the device. "Zoe. Those triangles wouldn't cover my hand. My actual hand."
Luca was not going to look. He was going to keep his eyes on the autopilot readouts and mind his own business. He looked, how could he not?
"They'd cover just fine." Zoe grinned. "You, on the other hand..." She gestured vaguely at Emily's chest. "Good luck."
Emily looked down at herself, then back at the photo. "There is no universe where that holds anything in place. That's not a top."
"Rio doesn't do suggestions. Rio does commitnt." Zoe swiped to another photo. "See? She's got your chest. Sa bikini. Works great."
"She's lying on her back! Gravity is doing all the work!"
"Then lie on your back. Problem solved."
Luca kept his face very neutral, for he wanted to say sothing but thought better of it.
Emily stared at the screen. Then a grin crept across her face, slow and dangerous. Luca recognized that grin. That was the grin that preceded decisions, and he was already imagining it. "You know what? Fine. If I'm going to be scandalous, we're going full scandalous." She pointed at Zoe. "But we're finding a wax place the second we land because that," she jabbed at the photo, "does not leave room for error."
Zoe's face lit up. "A Brazilian wax. Yes. I was going to bring it up but I wanted you to get there on your own."
"I got there." Emily was already laughing.
Luca stayed out of it. He had learned this. Ryan, from the cabin behind them, made the mistake of asking what the difference was.
Chris answered from sowhere further back. "The amount of fabric. Or the lack of it. For the guys too, by the way." He sounded way too calm about it. "Speedos."
"No," Ryan said.
"Yes."
"Absolutely not."
"Ryan." Chris leaned forward. "When in Rio."
Danny looked up from his notebook. "I'm sorry, did you say Speedos?"
"Welco to Brazil," Luca said.
The heat hit the mont the hatch opened. Puerto Rico had been hot. Luca had thought that was hot. He had been wrong. This was sothing else. Warm and wet and everywhere, pressing against his skin because the air did have weight. He stepped onto the tarmac, and his shirt stuck to his back in about four seconds.
The city spread out beyond the airfield in every direction. Green hills rising behind them, ocean ahead, and between those, Rio de Janeiro. Nothing about it looked like anywhere he had ever been.
"Okay," Emily said, stepping out beside him and stopping. Her eyes were wide, her smile already there before she'd had ti to filter it.
Luca took it in beside her. The light here was different. He couldn't have said how, more of it maybe, or at a different angle, but everything looked saturated. Like soone had turned up a setting he didn't know existed. Sandworth in March was gray and brown and sotis miserable. This was the opposite of that in every asurable way.
They were in taxis before anyone really discussed it, the drivers navigating Rio's traffic at speeds that didn't make sense. Hills crowded with houses climbed toward the Christ statue watching over everything.
Copacabana ca up as they turned a corner, that famous beach, the water going from green to blue in different areas, and Luca leaned forward in his seat. He had seen this beach in pictures his entire life. It was bigger than the pictures. The pictures had not ntioned the sound, or the sll, or the fact that the sand was so white it looked fake.
A mall trip, a wax appointnt Luca did not ask about, and several terrible purchasing decisions later, they hit Copacabana.
Chris was in the water before anyone had even laid out towels, his trajectory from the hotel to the ocean a straight line interrupted by nothing. Luca watched him go and then looked down at the Speedo situation, swallowed, and accepted it. The Speedos were exactly as small as advertised. He had fought inside his scout suit, which, while not as revealing, was likely just as tight as this thing was. He could handle a swimsuit.
Volleyball gas ran at regular intervals along the sand. Vendors moved through with coconuts and caipirinhas. Music ca from sowhere he couldn't pin down. After a week of Northern Europe in March, the sun on his shoulders was felt so good.
Emily ca out of the hotel in the Rio bikini that Zoe had picked out for her.
The plane conversation and the mall had not prepared him for this. On the plane, "Rio bikini" had been an abstract concept, a category of swimwear that was theoretically smaller than what they'd bought in Puerto Rico.
Emily was wearing it. Emily was standing on Copacabana beach wearing it, and Luca forgot what he was doing, which was laying out a towel, and stood there holding one end of it like an idiot.
She looked like she belonged on this beach in a way that Luca, currently pale-white and holding a towel wrong, absolutely did not.
She caught him staring. "Stop."
"I didn't say anything."
"Does it look cute?" she asked, glancing down at herself. She already knew the answer. She was testing him anyway.
Luca looked at her. At the bikini. At what the bikini was and was not covering, which was a very short list and a very long list respectively.
"Cute," he said. "Sure. Cute is a word."
She smiled and lay down in the sun.
He sat down in the sand beside her and decided that this beach, this city, this entire hemisphere was his new favorite place on Earth.
Emily lay beside him, face up, eyes closed. Her hand was near his. He covered it with his.
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"Stop thinking," she said, without opening her eyes.
"I'm not thinking."
She opened one eye. Looked at him. Closed it again.
He stopped thinking. For a while he just sat there, watching the water, feeling the heat sink into him. No portals. No roster. No Halden. Just sand and sun and Emily's hand under his, and the sound of waves that had nothing to do with him.
João had texted that morning. His team was running the gallery until noon, and if they wanted to co by.
The gallery was in a neighborhood the taxi driver navigated with the familiarity of soone who'd grown up nearby, the streets narrowing as they climbed, buildings stacked close together in ways that didn't look legal. Loud murals and graffiti covered every available surface.
The gallery itself was a converted ground floor, the front wall opened up to the street with a rolling shutter. Paintings hung on every wall, photographs pinned between them, sculptures assembled from materials sat on tables and pedestals.
João t them at the entrance. He was bronze from the sun, grinning wide enough that Luca could see it from halfway down the street. "You ca! Bem-vindos!" He grabbed Luca's hand and pulled him into a hug, then Emily, then Zoe. "Co in, co in."
Os Guerreiros were all there, and none of them were sitting around waiting. Maria was talking to a teenager about a painting, a figure made of layered newspaper and wire, reaching upward. Gabriel was hanging a new piece near the back. Paulo and Thiago were moving a sculpture, arguing about which way it faced. Larissa was at a small desk near the door, logging sothing on a computer.
João led them through. A group of kids, maybe fourteen or fifteen-year-olds, too young to have unlocked the system, were working at a long table in the back, painting and cutting and assembling things Luca couldn't identify yet.
"We grew up here," João said. "When the portals opened, the governnt sent soldiers to Leblon. Ipanema. Copacabana." He gestured past the rolling shutter, up the hill. "Up here, we got nothing. No soldiers, no evacuations. We had the System and each other."
He stopped at the long table where the kids were working. One of them looked up, saw João, and went back to cutting.
"Three of us died in the first month," João said. "You know what that does. After that, we had a choice. Leave and go sowhere that would take us, or stay and defend our ho." He picked up a brush one of the kids had left on the edge of the table, set it back in the jar. "We decided to stay."
"That's Marcos," João said. "He was sleeping in a doorway two years ago. His mother works at the clinic Maria helped set up." He looked at the painting. "Nobody told these kids they could do this. Nobody from Leblon ca up here and said, here, have so opportunity. We built it. From system credits."
Luca looked at the painting and then at João. "You're level 60. You could be anywhere."
"We could go to São Paulo. We could go to Europe." João shrugged. "And then what? So rich kid's team gets another mber, and up here nothing changes." He turned back to the room. "Every kid in this gallery knows soone who died defending the favelas. They also know six people from their neighborhood who went into those portals and ca back with enough credits to fund an art program. That's the thing that changes what they think is possible."
Zoe found a piece she wanted, a small tile mosaic, geotry in yellow and red, and bought it from a kid who negotiated the price with more composure than most adults Luca had t on the tour. The kid shook her hand afterward.
Through the open shutter Luca could see the hillside falling away toward the ocean, the glass towers of Leblon glittering below.
The restaurant that night was João's call, a corner place with plastic chairs and a hand-written nu that João explained for them. Picanha, feijoada, pão de queijo, and about six other things Luca couldn't na and didn't care to because he was too busy eating and drinking. The pão de queijo alone was worth the flight. He ate four of them before Emily started counting.
"You're going to make yourself sick," she said.
"So worth it," he said, and ate a fifth.
Nobody pitched anyone. Nobody brought up the roster or the ship or the mission. The conversation went where it wanted, and where it wanted was the early days. The System showing up in the favelas. The authorities fortifying the middle-class neighborhoods and leaving the rest to manage alone.
Maria had ended up next to Joey sowhere between the feijoada and the second round of drinks. Luca wasn't sure who had moved, but they were shoulder to shoulder now, and Joey was listening to her describe the clinic she'd built from her own earnings like nobody else at the table existed.
"You leveled for this," Emily said at so point, aning the Professional Classes. "Not for the portals."
"The portals paid for all of it," João said. "But yeah. We picked our classes for what we needed up here, not for anything else."
Maria leaned forward. "Healthcare in the favelas was a joke and still is. You got sick, you stayed sick, or you walked to a clinic that was already full. dical Research lets develop treatnts that are cheap and actually work, that are scalable."
"Ecological Engineering is my thing," João said. "Because the favelas taught what happens when you build without thinking. Everything patched together, no drainage, no ventilation. I want to build places that work with what's already there instead of pretending it doesn't exist."
Gabriel pointed at himself with his fork. "I specialize in urban planning. Sa reason. You grow up watching houses stacked on top of houses with no infrastructure and you start thinking about how to do it better."
Paulo and Thiago spent twenty minutes explaining why they had gone into their respective engineering classes, which mostly boiled down to keeping the others alive, and then spent another twenty arguing about which of them had been more useful in a specific fight three years ago that apparently remained unresolved.
Sowhere in the third hour, the conversation shifted. Emily asked the question Luca had been turning over since the gallery.
"So what's next? You're building sothing here. What does more look like?"
João was quiet for a second. He looked at Maria, then at Gabriel. "We've done what we can at level 60 with what Earth gives us. But the things we're learning, the research, the engineering, it all hits a ceiling. The System rewards discovery. New environnts, new problems, new data. That's where the real XP is."
João set his glass down. "Most kids up here top out around 30, maybe 35. That's the wall. After that you need off-world portals. The Moon, Venus, Mars. The trip is not that expensive. You save your credits, you get up there." He paused. "But the gangs, the drugs, the violence. It pulls kids out before they get the chance. They don't think they're supposed to go. Nobody they know ever has. So they stay, and 35 is the ceiling." He looked around the table. "We went. Europa, Ceres, everywhere we could reach. Six of us hit level 60. Nobody from our neighborhood had ever done that. If we go further, if six people from here go to space and co back at 70 or 80 with Professional Classes and research and credits and proof that it's possible..."
Maria looked at Joey. "The clinic I built treats two hundred people a week. If I co back from a two-year mission with advanced dical research and ten more levels in my class, I could build ten clinics. Twenty. Train people to run them."
"Sa for construction," Gabriel said. "Sa for ecology. Everything we learn out there cos ho."
The restaurant closed around them. The staff started stacking chairs and João switched to Portuguese with the owner, who laughed and waved a hand and brought out more drinks.
Sowhere around three in the morning, Maria suggested the overlook.
They followed a path up a slope, the city spreading out below them in lights, the ocean beyond that, just darkness on the horizon.
They settled on the grass. The whole group, sprawled in the way people sprawl when dinner turned into sothing longer than anyone planned. Ryan was on his back looking at the sky. Zoe was sitting by Danny, and had her knees pulled up, looking at the city.
Emily leaned into Luca, her head finding the spot on his shoulder that she had claid months ago and never given back. Luca put his arm around her and watched the city lights and thought that if soone had told him a year ago he'd be sitting on a hillside in Rio de Janeiro with the woman he loved, he would have asked what went wrong with the mission plan.
Nothing had gone wrong. This was the plan. Or at least the best part of it.
The horizon was starting to change. Not light yet, but getting there.
Luca was watching it happen when he heard João say sothing quietly, and then the group went quiet, and he looked over.
Joey and Maria.
She'd leaned over and kissed him.
Ryan sat up. "Joey?"
Joey looked like his brain had just crashed and rebooted. Then he kissed her back.
Ryan whooped. Chris started clapping. Zoe said sothing about ti.
Luca watched Joey's face. Joey was the one who took care of everyone and asked for nothing and deflected every complint with a joke. He had talked about family on stage in Paris, about how the crew had beco sothing that didn't have a word yet. Good for him.
Luca knew that look. He pulled her a little closer and she made a small sound against his shoulder.
When Maria pulled back, she was grinning. "That's how we do it in Brazil."
Joey looked dazed. "Wow," he said.
The sun ca up over the ocean while they were still sitting there.
Chris had them on the beach by seven. Nobody rembered agreeing to this. The run, the outdoor gym, the ocean afterward, all of it happened before Luca had fully accepted that he was awake.
Os Guerreiros t them at the beach at noon.
Joey spotted Maria before anyone announced them. Luca noticed him notice her: the way his attention shifted, the half-second before he pretended he'd just happened to look that direction. Maria walked over and said sothing that made him laugh.
They waded out past the break, the waves coming in around them. At so point they were close and then closer. The crew on shore was very deliberately looking at other things.
"Give it a week," Zoe said, to no one in particular, face up to the sun.
"She's already on the ship," Ryan said. "Roster-wise."
"I know," Zoe said. "That's why I said a week."
Chris, returning from a volleyball ga with Gabriel and Thiago, dropped onto his towel and looked out at the water. He too saw what was happening.
The afternoon stretched. The caipirinhas were cold. Sowhere behind them the city did what it did, and out in the water Joey and Maria were figuring sothing out, and Luca sat on Copacabana beach with sand between his toes and Emily's head on his leg and nothing he absolutely had to do right now. He could have let the tour end on this beach and called it a success and not felt guilty about it.
He would have felt guilty about it. But the thought was nice.
Sabine's ssage ca through at five-fifteen.
Colombia confird. Details to follow. Cartagena first, then Cali.
He read it twice. He put his communicator in his pocket and looked out at the water, at Joey and Maria standing close in the shallows, at Ryan asleep on his towel with his hat over his face, at Chris and Gabriel throwing a frisbee, at Zoe walking the waterline collecting shells she'd never keep.
Colombia could wait until dinner.
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